Wednesday, September 19, 2012

New DPS Single Edition features

Adobe made several recent announcements and updates that are great news for designers who want to create iPad apps:

First, they announced that Creative Cloud members can now submit an unlimited number of iPad apps to the App Store for no additional charge. (In order to submit apps to the App Store, Apple still requires you to enroll in Apple's iOS Developer Program, which costs $99/year.) If you aren't a Creative Cloud member, each submitted Single Edition app costs $395. This really "sweetens the pot" for Creative Cloud membership for any designer that wants to create Single Issue iPad apps.

Second, Version 23 of the Digital Publishing Suite tools was released. You can read about the new features here, and the bug fixes here. Among the notable new features: the ability to include vector overlays for PDF articles, ability to include high-res assets in PDF articles, ability to play audio while a user browses an article, ability to freeze a video at the last frame (finally!), and PDF support for smooth scrolling articles of any length.

Third, Version 23 of the Digital Publishing Suite includes a new, required Folio Builder panel update. This new much-improved Folio Builder includes a "Create App" command in the panel menu that passes your Folio file directly to the new DPS App Builder. This greatly simplifies the process of building Single Issue apps with DPS Single Edition.

Fourth, the new Adobe Step-by-Step Guide to Publishing iPad Apps with DPS, Single Edition was released. This valuable PDF guide is available to download at digitalpublishing.acrobat.com. You must sign in with an Adobe ID, and agree to the DPS terms and conditions to download the guide. Once logged in, click on "Companion Guides for Submitting iOS Applications to Apple" in the Additional Resources section in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Adobe has made a significant investment in simplifying the app building process with DPS and clearly documenting this. Most of the steps involved in creating and submitting an app to the App Store are steps that are mandated by Apple, and are performed on Apple web sites. Adobe has invested in clearly documenting all the steps in the process, including the Apple steps. This new Step-by-Step guide is the culmination of this documentation. Adobe hired yours truly to expand the existing documentation, make it as crystal clear as possible, and make it designer-friendly. With a great design by Lynn Phelps, I think we succeeded. I'm convinced that anyone willing to patiently follow step by step directions will be able to successfully create and submit an app with the help of this guide.